For the fifth year in a row, Bates College presents a dazzling double-header of student creativity in the arts.

A smorgasbord of performing, visual and literary arts, the Bates Arts Crawl begins at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 30, in locations around campus. The hotspots are the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St., presenting music and the visual arts; and Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave., featuring various performing arts in Memorial Commons and literary readings in the Little Room.

Also in Chase, a children’s artmaking area will be set up in the lobby. Free refreshments will be offered at several locations.

Members of the a cappella group the Manic Optimists cut up during their 2014 Arts Crawl performance.

Immediately following the Arts Crawl at 7:30 p.m. is Sangai Asia Night, a celebration of diverse Asian cultures through performance and traditional attire. The event is held in Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St., and will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Doors open at 7 p.m. both nights.

The Arts Crawl and both Sangai Asia Night shows are open to the public at no cost. For more information about the Arts Crawl, please call 207-786-8212 or 207-786-8294. For more about Sangai Asia Night, email organizers Tam Pham at mpham2@bates.edu or Amanda Pierog at apierog@bates.edu.

While a visitor who wants to stay in one spot will enjoy the Arts Crawl, the event is designed for roaming, taking in a little of this and a little of that. “It’s a sort of tasting platter of the arts scene at Bates,” says Nick Auer, a senior from Fairfield, Connecticut, who is both performing in and helping organize the event.

Premiered in 2011 to highlight the capabilities of Bates students in the arts, the Arts Crawl is now a fixture. “Students have this on their radar,” says Carol Dilley, associate professor of dance and director of the dance program. “The Arts Crawl has settled in as something we do here.”

Though the Crawl and Sangai Asia Night programs are still in development, here’s an overview:

• In Chase Hall, student writers will read from their poetry and prose in the intimate Little Room, on the ground floor at the front of the building. Upstairs in the spacious Memorial Commons, two stages will support nonstop performances of dance, theater, improv comedy and music.

• More music will be provided by Bates’ popular a cappella groups in various locations.

• Sangai Asia Night will feature performances of taiko drumming and a fishing dance from Japan; Chinese flute music; Vietnamese folk singing; and Bates’ spectacular Bollywood Team. Students will model traditional attires from across Asia during the intervals.

Watch video from the 2013 Arts Crawl. Text continues below the video.

The Arts Crawl is produced by the Bates Arts Collaborative, consisting of faculty, staff and students involved in teaching and presenting the arts on campus. Three students are members: Linnea Brotz, a senior from Berkeley, California.; Lillie Shulman, a sophomore from Brooklyn, New York; and Erin Montanez, a junior from Fairfield, Connecticut.

And students have increasingly administered the event in recent years. The Bates Musicians’ Union, for instance, is coordinating the music in Memorial Commons. Three student bands are confirmed to play: “Sabattus,” “Good-Luck Gentleman” and “The Remedy.”

Pendergast and Auer are both officers in the Robinson Players, Bates’ longstanding student theater troupe. Along with helping to run the Crawl, they will perform together in it, previewing a piece that they’re developing in collaboration with the Bates Dance Club. They agree that the informality of the Arts Crawl affords a rare proximity to the raw creative process.

For the performers, “one of the big things is allowing people to see your work in progress,” says Pendergast. “To show something raw and fresh, and see how people react to it, is really useful for a performer.”

For audiences, “there’s an exciting energy to knowing that the creation is happening,” Auer says.

The Crawl, adds Pendergast, “is one of the few opportunities for all of these different arts groups to work together. You can have a Robinson Players piece followed by a dance piece, followed by improv, followed by a cappella. Simultaneously there’s visual art across campus.

“It’s one of the opportunities for people to experience them all at the same time, rather than going to one Rob Players production or one Bates Arts Society exhibit.”

Associate Professor Christine McDowell, second from right, teaches a class on costume and scene design. (Photograph by Ryan Donnell)

The year in Theater and Dance begins with our annual Open House in Schaeffer Theatre at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 3, in Schaeffer Theater.

Come and catch up with old friends, meet first-year students and new faculty, and hear plans for the academic year.

Dance

Our annual Parents & Family Weekend Concert features works in a variety of styles by students and by faculty choreographers. This year’s program includes:

a first-years’ piece by Rachel Boggia;

a piece by Carol Dilley performed by the advanced dancers from DANC 253 Dance Repertory Performance and DANC 270D Studio:Repertory Styles;

and a piece by the DANC 270F Studio: Advanced Jazz Repertory class choreographed by Debi Irons.

The program is performed at noon Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 28-29, in Schaeffer.

We will also participate in the Multi-Arts Bates in Action Showcase initiated in 2012 by the Arts Collaborative for the Homecoming Weekend celebrations. Taking place this year in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall at 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 2, the showcase features student performances in theater, dance, readings and music.

Details will follow — but if you’re a performer, you might want to put this date on your calendar now.

Our main event, the Fall Dance Concert, features:

senior thesis works by Colleen Fitzgerald and Leroy Barnes;

a work by Advanced Jazz Repertory;

and four works by professional choreographers for Dance Repertory Performance.

The choreographers for Rep this year are dance program director Carol Dilley, who teaches the course; Meredith Lyons, recently arrived from Philadelphia to join the Bates Dance Festival team; and the renowned Urban Bush Women, known internationally for both their artistic voice and their social mission. Learn more about the Urban Bush Women.

Theater

Department-wide auditions for fall theater projects will take place in Schaeffer Theatre on Sept. 4 and 5, with callbacks on Sept. 6 if needed.

The fall mainstage production will be In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Senior Lecturer in Theater Katalin Vecsey. Carol Farrell will design costumes for In the Next Room and Michael Reidy will design the scenery. That production runs Oct. 31–Nov. 4 in Schaeffer.

Juniors Nick Auer and Jonathan Schwolsky and senior Andrew Overbye will direct TH 360Independent Study projects (titles to be announced) and will participate in the auditions.

We welcome to our department Brooke O’Harra, assistant professor of theater. This highly regarded, Obie Award-winning director and theater artist works at the forefront of contemporary theater. Her company, Theater of a Two-Headed Calf, appears regularly seen at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Soho Rep and other New York City venues. She will be directing in the winter semester, with the production title to be announced.

We are awaiting funding to bring to Bates The Duplicates, an exciting theater company from Austin, Texas, dedicated to creating original work. They will visit campus in early February to finish rehearsing their new project, Expo 2054. During their two weeks here, The Duplicates will hold workshops on devised theater (also known as collaborative creation) and performance.

During Short Term, Gretchen Berg, who has been teaching playwriting for us, will lead students in the creation of a devised theater piece that will go to local elementary schools in our annual DN/ED s29 Tour, Teach, Perform course.

Promoted to full professor in May 2011, Kirk Read is professor of French and chair of the Division of Humanities. A specialist in early modern French literature, he concentrates on pre-Revolutionary France and Francophone North Africa. Released in April by Ashgate Publishing, his Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction investigates gender, sex and sexuality in medical discourse and across various literary genres building on an acute knowledge of early modern gender and culture as well as contemporary gender theory.

In collaboration with colleagues and students at Bates, Read has developed a multimedia course in oral French that follows the adventures of a fictional North African heroine, Marie Malika d’Alger — an endeavor that combines his interests in language, culture and theater. Read has served as chair of French in 2011 and also chairs the Bates Arts Collaborative, a campus-wide initiative promoting and advancing the arts at the college.

Read received his doctorate and master’s in French literature at Princeton, and a bachelor’s degree in French at Dartmouth. Prior to arriving at Bates in 1990, he taught at Princeton and Dartmouth. He is also an
exhibiting photographer, and has written and recorded
nearly 20 audio commentaries for Maine Public Radio.

Four students gyrated in slow motion around Chase Lounge watched by an audience of 20 or so. Sometimes in pairs, sometimes a foursome, sometimes a trio with an odd woman out, they stayed in constant motion — but also in constant contact with one another. Arms around, shoulders rolling against shoulders and hips against hips.

Called “contact improvisation,” this practice is basic to modern dance training, explained Rachel Boggia, acting director of dance at Bates. It helps dancers learn what they’re capable of. It makes them more aware of what others around them are doing. And it inspires new ideas for their work.

Like contact improvisation, there’s no telling what new inspirations will come from Bates’ first-ever Arts Crawl, held Jan. 28. This Friday evening smorgasbord of the arts at Bates, performing and literary and visual, empowered the art makers and showed the campus the breadth and depth of creative work that happens here.

The Crawl told campus, “We’re here! We’re everywhere!” says Kirk Read, associate professor of French and chair of the Bates Arts Collaborative, the group that mustered up the event.

He adds, “Seeing all of these students involved in such marvelous, often impromptu arts events was invigorating and affirming of the arts on campus.” Despite other events worthy of attention that evening, including men’s and women’s basketball wins over Wesleyan and the Asia Night variety show, “I thought the overall engagement on campus was fantastic.”

sample the Bound to Art book exhibition and talk to student artists in their studios at Olin;

catch music, from gamelan to folk fiddling, in Perry Atrium;

hear poetry at Coram and see dance and theater at Chase.

Not to mention surprises awaiting along the way, such as strolling a cappella singers, snow sculptures on the Quad and soft colors emanating from glow sticks buried in snowbanks.

The Crawl culminated Bates Arts Week. Manifesting the renewed emphasis on creative work mandated by the Choices for Bates strategic planning process, the week began with an Arts Summit that brought three experts in community-based arts to campus for a Monday panel discussion, an evening performance by spoken-word poet and hip hop dancer Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and class visits by the visitors.

Mosaic of the arts

Wrapping up Arts Week on a cool starry evening ideal for strolling, the Crawl was by design a show of shows, a big-picture mosaic composed of short impressions.

Leaving the contact improvisers in Chase, an observer stopped next at the Imaging Center, in Coram Library, where large poetry excerpts hanging in the windows advertised the happenings inside: students in Eden Osucha’s poetry course reading their own and others’ verses.

One student read a favorite poem suitable to the weather, Billy Collins’ “Shoveling Snow With Buddha.” Another, presenting her own work in public for the first time, hung her heart on her sleeve with a piece about her parents’ divorce.

Perry Atrium and the Bates Gamelan Orchestra offered an oasis of tranquility. Spare, cyclical, the pure timbres of the metal pot-like and gong-like instruments seemed to emanate from the very bones of Pettengill Hall. Listeners sat still, feeling the sound in their own bones, and the players didn’t move much either, striking their instruments with intense deliberation.

Student artwork in the Olin lobby was charmingly irreverent. A set of line drawings traced the metamorphosis of the farmer from “American Gothic” into a chimp. Sets of paper dolls and their outfits included “Devout Women from Around the World,” posing in their underwear adjacent to habits, niqabs and the full prairie-style dresses favored by women in certain American cults.

If the lobby display (and adjacent Dining Services buffet) was a popular draw, the art studios down the corridor were jammed with visitors — and the energy level rose still more with the arrival of a group of college trustees and faculty, led by President Elaine Tuttle Hansen.

Pouring it out

A cappella was a dominant flavor of the Crawl, with three Bates singing ensembles turning up around campus in scheduled appearances and at large. Heading alongside the frozen Puddle, an observer encountered the Deansmen singing Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” the flat bright light from a pole fixture subbing for Morrison’s autumn moon.

Leaving Commons and campus after a driving display of dance by the Dynasty Step Club, an observer could hear the Merimanders all the way from the Coram terrace, fresh voices pouring it out into the night.

A dance solo in Chase Lounge, a work in progress by senior Lindsay Reuter, was the last stop for a number of spectators. “It was a perfect ending,” says Read. “Lindsay asked our indulgence and reactions. It really warmed the hearts of trustees and faculty who know the value of rehearsal, critique and generous input that happens in a place like Bates.”

Will this crawl be the first of many, or the one and only? “I know that students are energized about sustaining this higher visibility,” says Read. “The idea of a moonlight stroll through a campus that’s on fire with the arts in winter is something that has legs.”

As part of an ongoing exploration of ways to connect to community audiences and enhance the campus environment for the arts, Bates College holds an “Arts Summit” Jan. 24-25 that includes events open to the public at no cost.

At 4:15 p.m. Monday, Jan. 24, in a presentation titled Artists in the Liberal Arts: Guest Perspectives, three visiting artists discuss their work and the value of the arts in a liberal arts education. A Q&A follows the presentation.

The artists are Lynne Conner, chair of the theater and dance department at Colby College; Amara Geffen, a professor of art at Allegheny College who focuses on environmental, economic and community themes; and Marc Bamuthi Joseph, a renowned spoken-word performer and hip hop dancer. The panel takes place in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

Staged readings from works by Joseph follow at 8 p.m. on Jan. 24, also in Schaeffer. His Word Becomes Flesh (2003) uses dance, poetry and music to document a pregnancy from a young single father’s perspective. A work in progress, Red Black & GREEN: A Blues is a multimedia piece designed, the artist says, to “jump-start a conversation about environmental justice, social ecology and collective responsibility in the climate-change era.”

Finally, in a related event later that week, Bates students and faculty present a variety of creative work in a campus “Arts Crawl” beginning at 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 28. Modeled on downtown programs that feature a mix of performance and arts events, such as Portland’s First Friday, the Bates Arts Crawl offers attractions at several stops around campus.

A map and schedule will be available. The Arts Crawl will be followed at 7 p.m. by the annual Asia Night of student performances, food and fashions in Schaeffer Theatre. For more information about the Arts Summit, please contact 207-786-6381 or nsalmon@bates.edu.

“The Arts Summit will reach both outward and inward to celebrate art within the liberal arts,” says Kirk Read, associate professor of French and chair of the Bates Arts Collaborative, a group of faculty and staff charged with strengthening the arts at the college.

“Our guests, these respected and innovative artists, will enrich our discussions about connecting the arts on campus and in the broader community.”

“We have invited these artists because of their experience creating art in academic settings, with all the inherent delights and challenges,” adds Nancy Salmon, summit coordinator. “In addition, they are experts in using their artistry to connect with and build audiences.

“We’re excited about the perspectives and opportunities they might expose here at Bates.”

The college’s renewed investment in the arts is one aspect of Choices for Bates, a collaborative college-wide strategic initiative, led by President Elaine Tuttle Hansen, that is also reinforcing diversity, collaborative learning and pedagogy in math and the sciences.

A playwright, director and scholar, Conner taught at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh before coming to Colby. Her publications include Pittsburgh in Stages: Two Hundred Years of Theater (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007) and In the Garden of Live Flowers, co-authored with Attilio Favorini (Dramatic Publishing Company, 2003).

Conner’s research focuses on the history of audience behavior and psychology in order to guide cultural institutions toward more effective and inclusive participation practices.

Geffen, a ceramicist, sculptor and professor at Allegheny since 1982, is the director of the college’s Center for Economic and Environmental Development, which involves Allegheny students with the local community through projects involving sustainability.

Known to local audiences from his work at the Bates Dance Festival, Joseph is a National Poetry Slam champion, Broadway veteran, GOLDIE award winner and inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, which annually recognizes 50 of the country’s “greatest living artists.”

Descriptions of his work range from “electrifying” (Houston Chronicle) to “ever-elegant” (The Washington Post). In its review of Word Becomes Flesh, The New York Times called his work “eloquent . . . seamless . . . and remarkable.”